A Lot Can Happen After Birth

The Wikipedia entry for 1950's Born to Be Bad describes Joan Fontaine's character as "a manipulative young woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants." But the interesting thing about this Nicholas Ray noir is that she isn't actually all that vicious and it's unclear if she deserves the moral retribution dished out to her by the film's universe.

We meet her as an apparently shy young woman called Christabel who's come to stay in the San Francisco home of Donna (Joan Leslie), who works for Christabel's uncle. Donna's engaged to the fabulously wealthy Curtis Carey (Zachary Scott) and when the two go out for the evening Christabel is shocked to find Robert Ryan has let himself into the kitchen.

Ryan plays Nick Bradley, a smug, swaggering young author who effortlessly disarms Christabel. She hates him but she's drawn to him for the same reason, you know the drill. But it's Robert Ryan and Joan Fontaine so it's legitimately sexy.

Now, I would say Christabel is a manipulative woman but I wouldn't say the course of events that unfold are the effects of her complex Machiavellian scheme. Christabel goes shopping with Curtis to help him pick out a birthday gift for Donna. She comments on how marvellous a particular necklace is but changes her focus when she sees the price tag. The salesman is peculiarly aggressive with it, following Curtis and Christabel about the store with the necklace until Curtis is finally persuaded to buy it. Christabel remarks that perhaps Donna wouldn't want something so extravagant. When Donna receives the necklace happily, the issue of whether she's marrying Curtis for his money is introduced and becomes a subtle wedge between them.

All of Christabel's manipulations are like that. She gives a little push here and there but it seems other issues independent of anything she does end up persuading Curtis to marry her instead of Donna.

When they do marry, Curtis complains that Christabel has arranged to make herself a board member of so many charities entirely for the purpose of spending little time with him. It's possible the implication here is that she's doing something bad but she actually does seem to be devoting her time to these charities. If she were a soulless, "bitchy" (as multiple reviews inexplicably describe her), gold digger, wouldn't she be spending all her time just partying and shopping? What finally proves to be her downfall is that she can't resist having a rendezvous with Nick instead of visiting her sick aunt. Is Christabel selfish and unfaithful? Sure. But "stop at nothing?" What unfolds from there is arguably more tragic than just. Much like Cat People or Leave Her to Heaven, this is one of those in which the ostensible villainess is the most sympathetic person in the movie.

Born to Be Bad is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1840

A wild shade dispenses spirit hands.
As proud as apples, people rise above.
Convene the force of regal hunting bands.
Remember now that arrows signal love.
A stack of random junk ensures the sky.
No people came without a bridge of earth.
The god was rocks or days when finches cry.
The growing crop was twice a human's worth.
Performance cleans the apple cart of care.
As cleaning deems the students real, commence.
Remember times when hearts would take a stair.
No bin returns the dust you might dispense.
A dreamy stroll has pierced the workaday,
Confusing crowds from Guam to Paraguay.

A Compelling Shadow

Katharine Hepburn marries Robert Taylor but finds herself strangely drawn to an absent Robert Mitchem in 1946's Undercurrent. It's a fascinating gothic noir from Vincente Minnelli.

I really wonder sometimes how Robert Taylor came to be a star, I always found him kind of one dimensional. He plays Alan Garroway, famous for inventing a kind of engine crucial to winning World War II. When he meets young Ann (Hepburn) he sweeps the star-struck young woman off her feet. But her heart is almost immediately distracted by some ambiguous shadow in Alan's life. Violently jealous, he becomes enraged when Ann shows a fondness for a particular song or poem. Taylor's lack of subtlety as a performer makes it all seem even more nightmarish.

Ann is the point of view character and we follow her as she compulsively digs up clue after clue, in spite of, and largely because of, her husband's rage. When she finally meets Robert Mitchum, playing Alan's estranged brother Michael, she doesn't even know she's met her quarry. He pretends to be the caretaker of a ranch.

Mitchum's cool melancholy stands in contrast to Alan's angry grasping for Ann's loyalty. It's kind of the story of the sun versus the wind trying to get the man's coat off. Mitchum wins Hepburn's heart with the barest hints of his existence. It provides an interesting existential subtext to Alan's plight. How much is fate drawing Ann to Michael, how much is Alan's own rashness, how much is the peculiarly effective chemistry between Ann and Michael?

Undercurrent is available on The Criterion Channel until the end of the month.

Let This be a Warning

One flaw in marrying a guy you just met is he may be a serial killer. Kim Hunter faces this terrible possibility in 1944's When Strangers Marry (also known as Betrayed). There's a nicely nightmarish quality to the film's rising tension actually enhanced by the fact that not all of it makes a lot of sense. The twist ending isn't very satisfying but it's worth the ride especially with Robert Mitchum onboard in one of his earliest roles.

Millie (Hunter) gets into town and can't figure out why her new husband, Paul (Dean Jagger), is so hard to track down. She runs into an old flame, Frank (Mitchum), and he helps her in fruitless search.

They talk to the police but there's no help there. For some reason, Frank takes Millie straight to the homicide detective. It's not such a strange choice as Paul's evasiveness starts to make him look an awful lot like the "Silk Stocking Killer" who recently made off with ten grand. When Millie finally does track Paul down, he's staying in an apartment with pictures of strangers and an assumed name on the mailbox. Also, he's wearing new expensive clothes. Hmmmmmm . . .

Kim Hunter reminds me of Theresa Wright and the cords this movie strikes were done better in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Even so, When Strangers Marry has good performances and some intriging strangeness. It's available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1819

Announcing rapid changes, bows were broke.
Beyond the middle day, she wrote a card.
For something's left to love with rum and coke.
A jealous hand the pretty brains would guard.
The bloody captains name a yearly bride.
The mountain people make a festive coach.
At dawn, the chosen lass ahead shall ride.
The village life renews at dusk's approach.
The space between an ear and phone's a week.
The busy maid would never catch the lint.
For this, the corners built a massive peak.
The fuzzy floor accrued a mighty dent.
As past the dizzy wedding couples walk,
The angels dread the killer's breezy talk.

Whose Spine is It Anyway?

A young man is stuck in the hospital with a spinal injury. Meanwhile, his best friend is getting lost in the criminal underworld in 1950's Backfire (though the film was shot in 1948, it was shelved for two years). This is one of those peculiar, dreamlike noirs, somewhat in the vein of Detour, that may be viewed as much more surreal than it was intended to be. That's really the only way it's effective.

Bob (Gordon MacRae) is bedridden, recovering from a series of spinal surgeries. His best friend and war buddy, Steve (Edmond O'Brien), confers with the doctor who informs him Bob shouldn't be doing anything more strenuous than lifting a pencil for a long time. That puts a damper on Bob and Steve's dream to start a ranch together. However, Steve just can't bring himself to break the news to Bob. So he goes off alone, presumably to make the ranch happen without Bob's help.

One night, when Bob is heavily sedated, a mysterious woman with a European accent (Viveca Lindfors) appears and informs him Steve also has a spinal injury now and wants to die. She asks Bob if she should help Steve die or if she should insist that he live. Bob struggles to wakefulness and pleads for the latter. Afterwards, everyone tells him this was a hallucination, that there was no record of a mysterious European woman visiting the hospital.

Finally, Bob gets the okay to leave, but he's still perturbed by Steve's disappearance. It turns out, the police are looking for Steve too; he's wanted for murder. Bob won't believe it for a second so he and his girlfriend, Julie (Virginia Mayo), conduct their own investigation which mostly involves interviews.

And these interviews mostly involve extensive flashbacks. In fact, an extraordinary amount of the film consists of flashbacks of Steve, which is one of the chief complaints about the film from critics and even from the film's own director, who only took the job reluctantly. However, the flashbacks are so strangely pervasive, it adds to the dreamlike quality of the film. The linking of Bob and Steve--both have the same goal (a ranch), both suffer spinal injuries--suggests the men may be two sides of one personality, or two personalities in one mind. Is Steve the repository for all of the guilty deeds Bob's unwilling to own up to?

Backfire is available on The Criterion Channel as part of their Holiday Noir collection (there are some scenes set during Christmas).

The Supernatural Power of Regret

The beautiful Joan Leslie regrets killing her husband but then has the good fortune to travel back in time in 1947's noir fantasy Repeat Performance. This one is really charming.

After pulling the trigger, Sheila (Leslie) rushes off to a New Year's Eve party where she finds her droll but affectionate friend William Williams (Richard Baseheart) recently escaped from a mental institution.

She asks him if she should go to the police to which he replies, "They'd only arrest you for murder. They've got such one track minds." There are lots of cute lines like that in the film.

Sheila puts the blame for everything that went wrong on a trip to London she and her husband, Barney (Louis Hayward), made the previous January. If only she could travel one year back in time! And then, inexplicably, she does.

Someone at Wikipedia categorised this as a time loop movie like Groundhog Day but it's really not, it only features the single trip back in time. But like Groundhog Day, it's left unexplained. Sheila is walking up to her producer's apartment (she's a famous actress) with William when William disappears and her outfit under her fur coat changes. She doesn't realise what's happened until she's talking to her producer, John (Tom Conway).

She sets out trying to make the year different from the first time she lived it but finds destiny to be a stubborn thing--or, as this is a noir, let's say fate. Joan Leslie is gorgeous in this and a great pleasure for a point of view character.

Repeat Performance is available on The Criterion Channel as part of their Holiday Noir collection.

They Don't Dance On Death Row

A down on his luck tap dancer finds himself even further down on his luck when he's framed for murder in 1948's I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes. This surprisingly well written b-movie noir is a tidy little nightmare.

Husband and wife dancing team Tom (Don Castle) and Ann (Elyse Knox) are reduced to living in a miserable little New York apartment while she supports the both of them working a dance hall. This is an old job that seems to factor in a lot of films noir (Susan Hayward had the same gig in 1946's Deadline at Dawn). Apparently you used to be able to go to dance halls and pay girls to dance with you. Girls in films noir who take these jobs are implied to be just a few steps away from prostitution, something which eventually comes into play in I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes.

Tom's so fed up one night he throws his only pair of shoes at some noisy cats outside their window. He goes out to fetch them but they're nowhere to be found until someone deposits them on their doorstep the next morning. They don't know who it was but whoever it was, it turns out, wore the shoes when murdering a nearby miser (a radio announcer in the movie actually calls the murder victim a miser). Of course, the cops hang their whole case on the footprints at the crime scene. Meanwhile, Tom's also found a wallet stuffed with distinctive old fashioned bills like the miser was noted to carry. Not knowing about the murder, Ann begs Tom to spend the money instead of turning it over to the police, it being Christmas and all.

So quick as a wink, Tom winds up on Death Row and it's only Ann left to prove his innocence with the help of one detective (Regis Toomey) who happens to be one of Ann's dance hall regulars. And he needs coaxing, which Ann does with a kiss and an implicit promise of more later. Ann really is the centre of the film; she has all the moral quandaries. Her convincing Tom to spend the money is like Eve getting Adam to eat the apple and it hangs over her endeavours to get him back like original sin.

I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes is available on The Criterion Channel as part of a Holiday Noir collection.

Ella Fitzgerald also sang about the dance hall:

Skulls and Ivy

It's hard out there for a femme fatale. 1947's Ivy gives us her point of view, for once, as we follow the machinations and misadventures of Ivy Lexton in her attempts to secure a vast fortune via a road of besmitten beaux. The first half of the film is much better than the second as we find ourselves contemplating just what Ivy's capable of. The second half settles into dull, moralistic plot mechanics.

We meet Ivy (Joan Fontaine) on her visit to a fortune teller (Una O'Connor), a handy way to deliver a little exposition and to set a cloud of doom over her head. We learn that not only does she already have a husband, she's already having an affair. The fortune teller predicts wealth is coming her way but only if she can break up with her lover. But then, after Ivy leaves, the fortune teller predicts an even greater misfortune to come, so great she refrained from telling the wicked woman.

How wicked is she? She does seem reluctant to poison her husband when the time comes. She really doesn't seem to like seeing him suffer.

Meanwhile, breaking up with her lover, Roger (Patric Knowles), isn't so easy as the guy is really pushy, calling her constantly. And yet the heavy handed moralistic ending lets him off the hook, which kind of annoyed me.

This is one of those American movies set in England filled with English actors who are forced to speak with American accents. One exception is Herbert Marshall who plays Miles Rushworth, the wealthy gentleman who takes a shine to Ivy, despite his morals prohibiting him from making love to another man's wife. Marshall was established enough to sound as English as he damned well pleased (and was).

Ivy is too much of a temptation for him to resist, though. And sure it's credible; Fontaine is absolutely stunning in those Edwardian summertime getups.

Ivy is available on The Criterion Channel.

They Called It Retirement

It's funny how a story of murder and madness can be so cosy. 1941's Ladies in Retirement stars Ida Lupino as a wealthy woman's servant who tries to get her mentally unstable sisters moved into the country house. The movie has beautiful atmosphere around its existential rumination on class resentment.

Ida Lupino was 23 years old at the time but she's playing a character who was supposed to be 60 on the Broadway show on which the film is based. The filmmakers tried to do everything they could to make her look older but Ida Lupino still looks young even for 23.

So it's a little odd when 31 year old Louis Hayward, playing a character called Albert, shows up claiming to be her nephew. It's odd but not impossible, of course, if Lupino's character, Ellen, had an older brother or sister who had a child before Ellen was born. So I mostly just looked at it like that, except the nephew angle is an odd choice for Albert to choose when he cons Miss Fiske (Isobel Elsom), Ellen's employer.

One of the things I love about this movie is that it pits a remorseless conman against a desperate murderess. There are no heroes here. At the same time, like any good noir protagonist, Ellen's motives complicate the issue. Ellen's two mad sisters, played by Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett (I was so happy to see a movie in which Elsa Lanchester and Ida Lupino are sisters), have been abused in a London asylum. They've got nowhere else to go. We also learn the three came from a previously wealthy family and much of their former furniture and knickknacks are in Miss Fiske's home because she'd bought them from Ellen. So the film puts a lot of tension on the artificial construct of transactions on which society is based. Does Ellen really have a right to turn out Ellen and her sisters, however badly the sisters behave? So the motive to murder is abundantly clear. It's a pity for Ellen that Albert starts nosing around.

Ladies in Retirement is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1739

The question pasta washed a saucy state.
O fortune's stalls please house a worthy horse.
The climbing score reduced the going rate.
A shiny ship resumed the glitter course.
A watching worm has wondered why we stopped.
A scrap of song enlivens seconds lost.
Above the crimson trees a signal dropped.
With wooded bars the forest reckons cost.
A moment's lust demands a cloudless sky.
Obtrusive eyes have ruined heaven's lure.
The frightened people can't resist to pry.
Intrusive brutes demand a single cure.
The final break removed the foot from leg.
The changing month infused the pickled egg.

No Pigeons Around

I ended up watching Double Indemnity last night because I received the new Criterion blu-ray in the mail, a birthday present from my mother (to-day is my birthday). It sure is beautiful now.

I remember the trouble I had getting it on DVD for years. Finally, I bought a Chinese bootleg copy which, as you can imagine, was pretty lousy in picture quality. But I was happy to have something and probably watched it a dozen times. Then Universal finally got around to releasing a special edition DVD which was excellent but can't hold a candle to finally getting a blu-ray.

Nowadays, I tend to watch movies thinking about how easy it would be to show to a Japanese acquaintance. I realised this one would be just about impossible. How could a translation truly do justice to the loop-de-loops of colloquialisms in Raymond Chandler's script? Where to begin with a line like the one where Phyllis offers Walter some tea and he's says that'd be fine unless she has "some beer that's not working." You'd have to be aware of the English oddity, "fix a drink".

The dialogue's just filled with stuff like that which the native speaker is just barely able to keep up to. Obviously it's been talked about a lot and it's obviously more stylised than realistic. But I like how it conveys what Walter is trying to do with Phyllis.

All that patter is covert yet obvious. It's so clever it seems meant to be slightly disorienting. He thinks he's toying with her but the whole time he's just painting a picture for her of an opportunity to find an accomplice in her husband's murder.

It's a terrific film, and shot on film so they can continually release higher definition editions. It's one of the good things in life.

The Damned Treasure

A woman's lifelong sense of financial inadequacy finds physical manifestation in a stolen bag of cash in 1949's Too Late for Tears. Directed by Byron Haskin just before he made the definitive film version of Treasure Island (a fact that becomes more intriguing the more I think about it), this film noir about an exceptionally ruthless femme fatale is captivating and intricately intelligent.

Lizbeth Scott stars as Jane Palmer. She and her husband, Alan (Arthur Kennedy), are driving home one night after deciding not to go to a party because Jane can't stand the thought of people looking down on her. Suddenly, a passing car tosses a bag into their back seat and another car starts to chase them. Jane urges Alan to flee.

The bag is stuffed with tens of thousands of dollars. Alan wants to turn it into the police but Jane argues the money is probably untraceable and, if they wait to spend it, and spend it carefully, they can just keep it. Doesn't sound so hard, at least not until Dan Duryea shows up while Alan's at work.

He's playing a tough named Danny and as nasty and threatening as he is, Lizbeth Scott starts to give you the impression that she's even worse, something he notes with admiration a few times. While he's just a thug looking for a fast track to easy living, Jane's a woman in a constant state of anxiety. This cash represents the first shot she's ever had to climb out of the pit she's lived in all her life. As she explains at one point, she grew up in a white collar family that had less money than their neighbours, so when it came to keeping up with the Joneses, her life was a constant series of losses. So when she does kill, she might truly regret it--she certainly seems conflicted. But the monster of warped self-perception won't let her stop.

The cast is all superb--Scott, Kennedy, and Duryea. Don DeFore shows up as a mysterious and off-puttingly affable character. His past and his role in this affair are intriguingly murky and I enjoyed watching one clue after another shift the impression his character made on other characters.

Lizbeth Scott looks so old in the movie, I thought she was at least fifty, but it turns out she was only 28 at the time. I guess she had the same issue as Susan Sarandon, one of those people who's looked 80 since she was 20. Her apparent age adds some edge to her desperation. Maybe the sense of the clock running down would make her extra frantic to raise her economic status.

Too Late for Tears is available on Amazon Prime.

The Compulsive Runner

A guy who can't trust anyone meets a girl who can't help trusting him. 1951's He Ran All the Way is a particularly tragic film noir about two kinds of fools who accentuate the pain of each other's circumstances too well. The writing isn't always strong but the performances by John Garfield and Shelly Winters are dynamite.

Nick (Garfield) is unemployed and wakes up to the sound of his mother constantly berating him about it. So his friend convinces him to take part in robbing the payroll of a nearby factory.

His accomplice is killed so Nick, alone, runs off with the 10,000 dollars. He's not cut out for this work, though, he's all nerves. He tries to blend in with a crowd but he can't stop darting his eyes everywhere, sweating, and compulsively dashing for cover at every opportunity. Finally, he has the bright idea to go to a public pool. He rents a locker and stashes the cash, changes into swim trucks, and jumps in. And meets Peg (Winters), who can't swim.

Instinctively, he tries to teach her, and, instinctively, she clutches him when she's afraid. As the film progresses, this initial impression is continually reaffirmed--she compulsively trusts him. Even after he takes her whole family hostage and holes up in their apartment.

A lot of the plot doesn't make sense. Nick is content to let anyone leave the apartment to go about their regular lives, even Peg's kid brother. No-one ever seems worried the kid will blab, the mother never thinks of telling the kid to run away and stay at a friend's. It's a bit silly, but the movie continues to be watchable for Garfield and Winters. He's like a cornered animal and she has a guileless, unshakable faith in him. Not that she kids herself, she just looks more and more wounded as he demonstrates again and again her trust is misplaced.

He Ran All the Way is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1646

Enclosing felt, the notice sent a word.
A buzzing built to break the purpose out.
Condensing soup provoked the slurpy bird.
Approaching steeds described the castle route.
Above the falling tree the foot descends.
Returning boots embroiled toes and nails.
Abiding birds absorb the egg amends.
A wooden boy would soon devour whales.
The crashing frost dispelled the goblin's turn.
A luncheon test distorts the dollar bill.
Expanding socks destroyed the ancient urn.
Absorption chewed the ashes out the will.
The helpless run collides against the pool.
A dizzy driver damns the hapless fool.

Navigating the Improbable Shadows

A cold-blooded professional killer finds himself suddenly caught up in a lot more than he bargained for in 1942's This Gun for Hire. Alan Ladd stars as the killer, Raven, with Veronica Lake as a saucy magician called Ellen. Like Detour, it's a story filled with absurd coincidences, which, from one perspective, could be taken as weak screenwriting. But the genuine feelings behind it turn the absurdity into nightmare logic.

The film starts off playing with our sympathies right away. Raven, cute and stone faced young man, sets up for his next hit. He pauses to give a saucer of milk to a kitten. A charwoman comes in to tidy up the place and tries to toss the cat out the window. Raven smacks her and tears her dress.

Already, he's attractive and repulsive at the same time. The movie continues this deliberate back and forth. He goes to his job, kills a gangster and his girl, but then stops on a staircase outside to help a girl with broken legs retrieve her ball.

Unbeknownst to him, he's getting paid in counterfeit bills by Laird Cregar. Cregar plays L.A. nightclub owner Willard Gates. Gates hires Ellen (Lake) as an act for his nightclub. Ellen just so happens to get a seat by Raven on the train. Gates just happens to be on the same train and sees the two together. And if that's not enough for you, Ellen also happens to be engaged to the detective investigating Raven's killings (Robert Preston, who gets top billing). And she's been secretly tasked by a senator to uncover Gates' business relationship with the Axis powers. Whew.

It all works because Raven is a solid presence as a conflicted, lost wanderer in this dark world of murder and avarice. It's not among the best films noir, but it's certainly fascinating and Raven is a magnetic character.

This Gun for Hire is available on The Criterion Channel.

Muscling In On Tokyo

Samuel Fuller is one of the most influential directors of all time but it's strangely difficult to find most of his movies. The Criterion Channel just added one of his more fascinating accomplishments, 1955's House of Bamboo. A disorienting and beautiful film noir purportedly shot entirely in Japan, it stars a surprisingly scruffy Robert Stack as an American searching Tokyo for answers.

In fact, he's from San Diego, just like me, as he reveals in one scene. It makes me want to not shave and to swagger around scowling at everyone. That's what he does, finally tracking down the beautiful wife of a recently deceased gangster.

We meet Mariko (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) in a bathhouse where Stack nearly busts in on her. He does get physical with her when he finally corners her in her home. Later in the film, this is all excused because it was all an elaborate act and Stack's on the side of the law. But what happened, happened, of course. Arguably, it's this kind of movie that Hitchcock's Vertigo was riffing on.

It's Robert Ryan as the head of the local mobsters who's the real star of this movie, giving a terrific performance as always. He has an amazing entrance, too, when Stack is thrown through a paper wall, winding up at Ryan's feet.

As Stack is accepted into the gang, the plot starts to borrow a bit from White Heat. It's a bit disappointing as it comes along with the gang of Americans having very little to do with the local Japanese. They don't even seem to speak Japanese. How have they managed to operate in Tokyo so long?

It's disappointing because the film is in many ways light years ahead of other American films of the period in terms of authenticity. It's not just shot in Tokyo, it really feels like Japan when Robert Stack is roaming the streets, roughing people up.

Fuller and his cinematographer come up with some amazing shots. I really liked the look of a heist at some kind of factory.

For some reason I really like this shot of the gangsters running in front of these nearly blank walls.

Among Ryan's gang are Cameron Mitchell and DeForest Kelley in small but very effective roles.

House of Bamboo is available on The Criterion Channel.

Fires in the Desert

A millionaire with a broken leg is left to die in the desert by his wife and her lover. It all would've worked out so well except they didn't count on one thing--that millionaire is played by Robert Ryan in 1953's Inferno. Ryan busts his way through the desert with a makeshift splint in this terrific man-versus-nature film.

The screenplay by Francis Cockrell and director Roy Ward Baker are good at staying smart and keeping the story rooted in a real sense of the circumstances. When Donald (Ryan) spots a car and unsuccessfully tries to get its attention, I thought, "At least now he knows where the road is." Almost immediately, Ryan had a line almost exactly along those lines. It's that kind of thing that makes you feel you're right there with a character; you're figuring things out together.

Ryan is supposedly playing a spoiled brat but he comes off as way too tough for that. I guess that's a flaw but I'm not complaining.

His crooked wife is played by Rhonda Fleming while her lover is William Lundigan, giving a performance decent enough for an action scene. Fleming is pretty good as someone truly shallow with some hidden depths of evil. She rationalises that leaving Donald is not as bad as actually killing him but Lundigan quite rightly points out that a slow death in the desert is much, much worse than a quick shot to the head. Is she really just a coward or does she actually want him to suffer?

Meanwhile, Robert Ryan lurches across the desert sands, surviving on cactus water, deer, and a thirst for revenge.

Inferno is available on The Criterion Channel as part of their new Film Noir in Colour collection.